


There Are No Princes

by Emjayelle



Series: Fairy Tale Princesses [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:17:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjayelle/pseuds/Emjayelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say there is a witch in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are No Princes

**Author's Note:**

> Written last year for the summer pornathon magic challenge, and finally expanded from its original 750 words length. 
> 
> I really love this universe, I'll admit, as I'm incredibly fond of (read: obsessed with) witches, and fairy tales.
> 
> Thanks to ingberry for the quick beta <3

 

 

They say there is a witch in the woods.

 

★ ★ ★

 

Elena stumbles upon the house by accident. Leaves crackle under her feet as she approaches, the sound loud in the eerie quiet of the woods, the vibrant, dying stillness of autumn. 

The house is small, the wood of its walls worn and pale, and fragrant smoke comes out of the chimney, smelling of cedar and herbs. Trees loom around the small and wild clearing, bending over the house, their long fingers straining but not quite touching it. Elena doesn’t know if they’re trying to protect the house, or swallow it whole.

She shivers and hesitates, one foot in the clearing, the other still in the shadows of the path that led her here.

When the door opens with nary a sound, barely a groan of wood, she startles, has to brace herself against a tree. A breeze rises as a woman steps out on the porch, and Elena raises a hand to keep her curls out of her face.

The woman’s eyes are piercing, looking straight at Elena, but her smile’s kind, and her clothes are old, but clean; her hands white against the faded brown of her skirt. Her long, dark braid hangs over her shoulder, neat and perfect. 

Elena has never been able to get her hair to behave. It’s the colour of wheat, but as messy as a bird’s nest.

 

★ ★ ★

 

“I used to be a princess, too,” Mithian says while she finishes braiding her hair. The soft light that filters through the trees, scattered and diffused through the windowpane, makes her look younger, a little bit fragile.

Elena swallows thickly, her own fingers curling in her skirts. A searing ache wakes in her chest, right across her skin, at the mention of the word, like a startled, frightened little thing trying to escape.

“What happened?” she says, voice small, glancing at Mithian.

“The inevitable.” Mithian shrugs. “All princesses must go into the woods to become women, it’s how stories go.”

An unbidden laugh escapes Elena’s lips. It sounds broken. “Stories,” she says. “There are always princes in stories, no?”

Elena hasn’t seen any prince in a long time.

“There are no princes, Elena. Only woods. Only witches.”

The silence is thick, and Elena shifts on the hardwood bench. “I had a stepmother,” she says. 

It falls between them like the confession, the acknowledgement, it is. 

Mithian gives her an amused grin and stands up. She gathers her skirts around her legs, high on her naked thighs, so she can sit across the bench in front of Elena with a grace that can only be partly taught.

Elena wonders why she hadn’t seen it before.

Mithian leans forward with laughter in her eyes and brushes Elena’s lips with hers. “And I was the prettiest,” she says, her breath a ghost on Elena’s mouth, her smirk the most welcome of temptation. 

Elena snorts and presses forward.

 

★ ★ ★

 

“What gave me away?” Elena asks, days later, stopping at the top of the porch’s stairs. She looks up over the trees, still dying in bright colours, still beautiful, with a hand over her eyes to shield the sun.

Her hair still flies into her eyes at the smallest breeze, like it has always done. There are holes and in her skirts, dirt on her hands, and bruises on her knees from all the times she has tripped just coming here.

She was never really good at it.

Mithian sighs, comes back toward her, and steps onto the first step leading to the porch to grab Elena’s wrist forcing her to look down.

“Silly Elena,” she says with a smile, almost fond, as she tucks Elena’s errant curls behind her ears. “The world is full of kingdoms. Did you really think you were the only one?”

 

★ ★ ★

 

“There’s a black tower to the north,” Elena says, stretching her hands across the worn wood of the table, wiggling her fingers to see the dancing shadows they create against the wall. “They say there’s a dark witch living there. They say she can make a man mad, make him see his fears until his will is hers to control. They say she seduced a queen that way.”

Mithian rolls her eyes and wipes her forehead with a corner of her apron, stirring the cauldron over the fire some more. The air’s thick and stuffy, the windows closed tight, and Elena sees things flicker at the edges of her vision; impossible things. She turns her head quickly but it’s always just a broom, a bottle on a shelf, the pillows on the bed. 

“They say a lot of rubbish,” Mithian says, hair sticky and wet on her temples.

Elena just frowns, cuts a mushroom and takes a piece between her fingers, smelling the sweet, earthy aroma of it that makes her want to eat it, stick it to the roof of her mouth with her tongue. 

Mithian stops her with a firm hand around her wrist. 

There is a witch in the woods, they say. She has a poison garden.

“The queen seduced the witch,” Mithian says, her breath even hotter on Elena’s cheek than the air around them, and Elena turns her head into it, closes her lips on Mithian’s jaw, licks the saltiness and sweat.

She eats Mithian’s moans instead, then the wetness between her thighs, sweeter than any mushroom.

 

★ ★ ★

 

Elena digs her nails into Mithian’s cheeks, hard enough to leave half-moon marks into her skin, but not enough to draw blood.

“I’d do it,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “I’d do it if you wanted me too, but I wouldn’t go away.” She digs a bit harder until Mithian winces.

Mithian wets her lips, her eyes wide and dark and considering.

“I would be ugly,” she says, just as low.

“I wouldn’t care.” 

Mithian stays still and Elena holds her breath, arms starting to shake with the effort of not drawing blood on Mithian’s perfect face, of not pulling away either. Because she would do it, make a mess of it. She would, she would, she would.

After a long time, Mithian wraps her hands around Elena’s wrists, and Elena lets go.

She kisses the ten red marks across Mithian’s cheeks with trembling lips.

 

★ ★ ★

 

“I know a water-witch that could heal that for you.” Mithian trails a finger on the long, red scar between Elena’s breasts, soothing the burn still pulsing under her skin. “She lives by a lake, not two days east from here. She’s a beast. It would be easy for her.”

Elena shakes her head and smiles down at her. Mithian rests her chin on Elena’s hipbone and Elena shivers when she drags her wet lips on her skin, dips her tongue in Elena’s bellybutton. 

“I had a stepmother.” Elena isn’t sure if she wants to remind herself or Mithian of that fact. Besides, it explains everything, and there’s not much else to say. 

The scar needs to stay.

Mithian raises herself up to trace it with the tip of her tongue, all along Elena’s throat, until Elena tilts her head back and moans when Mithian blows cool over the wetness.

“Hearts are powerful,” Mithian says against Elena’s pulse as she slips a thigh between Elena’s legs and pushes it against her. Everything about Mithian is soft. Elena palms her sides, thumbs her nipples until she can feel Mithian’s muscles quiver under her hands and goosebumps erupt under her fingertips.

Elena pushes back on Mithian’s leg, rides her thigh with rough, urgent movements of her hips. When she glances down between their bodies, the skin there shimmers slightly in the candlelight with her pleasure. She drags her fingers through it, then against herself, wet and warm, before pushing them into Mithian’s mouth, against her tongue as it licks at them. 

She pulls her fingers out, laughing when Mithian nips at them with a smile, mouth red and panting, and grabs at her hair. Mithian gasps at the sting and shakes against Elena, a tremor that forces her down harder, and Elena arches up with a whimper, with a spike of heat in the throb between her legs. 

Elena’s fingers slide in the sweat at the base of Mithian’s spine, and with her hand still in Mithian’s hair, she urges her to put her lips on her breasts, her nipples. Mithian grunts and moans, mouth full, nipping and licking as she snakes the hand not holding her up between them and pushes two fingers against Elena, slick and hard and demanding. 

Elena moves faster, and Mithian grinds down suddenly, driving her hard into the bed, her fingers and mouth a brand on Elena’s skin, and the world explodes into light, hot and trembling inside of her.

There are shadows on the ceiling that shift in rhythm to their breathing, into shapes Elena thinks she recognises, like shadowplays.

The woods are dark outside, and no birds sing.

 

★ ★ ★

 

“They say there are two witches in these woods,” Elena says with a smile as she picks up a mushroom, her fingers dirty with soil. She puts it gently between her teeth, but does not bite.

Mithian huffs, rolls her eyes at her. She pokes Elena’s side until she spits the mushroom into the basket between them, then leans in to lick at her upper teeth with a smug look on her face.

“There are witches in every woods.” 

Elena laughs.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you see any mistakes and/or typos, or have issues with anything in my fics, please free to contact me on [tumblr](http://emjayelle.tumblr.com) (anonymous option is on) or on [livejournal](http://emjayelle.livejournal.com). Thank you.


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